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Tue, 31 Mar 2015 07:00:28 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.110 Essential Tools That Every Startup Needshttp://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/31/10-essential-tools-every-startup-needs/
http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/31/10-essential-tools-every-startup-needs/#commentsTue, 31 Mar 2015 07:00:28 +0000http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/?p=23504Building a startup is a long-term affair and getting your minimum viable product off the ground sooner rather than later has become a prerequisite, with over 500,000 startups taking off each year in the USA alone. Startups are now realising that the ingenious idea of theirs won’t last longer if it doesn’t take off earlier than planned for.

A startup usually has to be frugal in its operations and bigger investments on the labour pool or technologies aren’t feasible. This leads us to the reality that a startup and small business, has to get a lot of done in a comparatively much lesser time. To kick-start your small business, assuming that it isn’t backed up by thousands of dollars in angel funding or venture capital, you would need access to the ideal set of tools tailored just to suit your needs.

So, to get more startups up and running quickly, below are a list of the Best 10 Essential tools that every startup ought to make use of. These diverse set of tools will help you tackle all mundane, yet time-consuming tasks and save you a lot of your valuable time and expenditure untrained personnel.

Social media is something a startup couldn’t ignore at any cost. With the rise of the Internet giving power to the people to reach out to a far wider audience, establishing and maintaining meaningful connection with your customers is essential.

There are tens of powerful social media platforms out there that you ought to be active upon and Hootsuite is just the right tool for managing all your social media platforms from a single tab. Be it with posting new updates across multiple social media platforms or tracking user activity on them, Hootsuite has your back with the ability to manage and schedule your social media posts. Their social media monitoring tools allow you to keep track of what fans are saying about your brand and respond to them instantly, building better relationship with your customers.

In addition to all this, you also get analytics of your social media profiles to keep track of what is working and what isn’t to change course. You can also collaborate with your team and let them lend their voice to the bigger cause of the startup.

Salesforce’s Desk is one of the best and must have SaaS tools for every startup and small business alike for customer service management. Customer support is one of the most rudimentary part of a business and yet many start-ups have failed due to not valuing the customer’s voice in high regards.

Customer feedback is a great way to grow your startup even better and Desk’s customer management tool makes it even easier and quicker for you to have access to their cases and get things sorted out at your earliest. The tool also helps startups and small businesses to build ‘Help’ documentation and provide them with a self-service solution to let them find solutions for a few minor tasks themselves.

Satisfaction scores and performance monitoring makes it even easier for your startup to quickly get to the heart of problems and resolve them faster.

Comindware is a company delivering workflow and project management solutions to small businesses and Fortune 500 companies alike. Comindware Tracker, Project and Team network are three of the best software solutions to manage your startup’s workflow better. To manage all your repetitive business’ tasks, documents and data,

Comindware’s Tracker software lets you collaborate with your team, make the key data accessible and workflow automated for better operations. The drag-and-drop graphical user interface makes it easy to create and manage team workflows. Comindware Project is a tool that makes project management easier with the ability to set and track priority tasks and key dates.

Comindware’s Team Network is the comprehensive internal team communication tool that would let your team keep all task-related discussions right in the task, manage documents collaboratively, and discuss specific matters beyond or across your projects in separate discussion rooms.

Wave Apps Accounting tool is a great free tool for startups and small businesses to keep track of their accounts and payment receipts. Getting all your numbers right is essential, no matter how negligible you might consider them at an initial stage. The best thing about this app is that it ties up with your PayPal or Bank account to make manual accounts entry look like a thing of the past. You can also generate professional balance sheets for your business, which are essential while trying to reach out to potential investors.

Their free unlimited invoicing and payroll features make it easier for small businesses to keep everything synchronized and accessible at a single place.

For start-ups without a standalone sales team and wanting to make the sales pipeline even simpler and easier to manage, Pipedrive’s visually appealing way of putting your sales data is truly effective. You can use the simple drag-and-drop interface to list and view your products based on the sales stage they are presently in. The timeline view of sales pipeline helps you focus better on the important activities and also lets you get back on track to work on deals that are to be closed sooner.

Now you can become your startup’s own sales manager and cut on the large personnel usually employed by big corporations.

DaPulse is one of the best team management solutions that have ever been created. This product helps startups keep track of the big picture and group people together to work collectively on the bigger motive of the startup. This is the place where your businesses’ higher level goals and motives are met with doable tasks and the people associated with them.

DaPulse makes it easier for you to assign people who lead a specific task and collaborate with them from a single place, keeping track of all the important tasks and to-do’s while on it.

Trusted by some of the major Fortune 500 companies, Optimizely is simply the best A/B testing tool that you will ever use. A/B testing is essential to every business at any stage of its existence, as a company ceases to grow further when it fails to adapt change. Tracking what isn’t working and making amends to get it right the next time around is made easier with A/B testing of your app or website. You can quickly get started on your website or app analytics with a clean visual editor and a simpler integration with different platforms.

The powerful web and mobile optimizations provides you with actionable data and a real-time ROI that lets you target your audience better.

WordPress is a great way to get started on a blog for your startup. There are many blogging platforms available with their individual advantages and drawbacks to them, but to quickly get started on one without having to code much, WordPress would be a great choice. A blog is essential to startups these days and WordPress’s ubiquitous blogging platform can be used to create communities to share a blog among the internal team or make the posts. There are two variants of WordPress –the regular one can be accessed at WordPress.com and the self-hosted version at WordPress.org.

The comprehensive Content Management System makes sure that major part of your blogging endeavours are taken care of without you having to keep fidgeting with the code on your blog. The great community support for WordPress with thousands of available themes and plugins make it easily the widely accepted choice for a blogging platform.

Mailchimp is probably one of the most famous SaaS tool on this list and yet poses itself as an essential when it comes to building and maintaining your powerful E-mail subscribers. More than 7 Million users deliver over 500 million E-mails each day to their subscribers through this app. In addition to designing opt-in newsletters to let customers sign up, you can also manage your subscribers by taking a look at their individual profiles, which feature their level of engagement with your business.

Their advance analytics and reporting let you monitor sales and activity on your website through E-mail opt-ins. With complete flexibility over the design and accessibility, Mailchimp is clearly the best app for managing E-mail better for any business.

Google Apps for Business is a comprehensive set of tools developed by Google – all in one place. These tools were built for communicating, collaborating and storing of essential data and managing the processes. Some of the major apps included here include the likes of Gmail, Google Drive, Hangouts, Calendar, Drive, Docs and Vault. Video and voice calling, storage space for essential data, Business E-mail addresses and easier collaboration are some of the essential features of Google Apps for Business that should appeal to every startup.

Built for small businesses and corporate companies alike, Google Apps for business is a set of tools that cannot be ignored.

Conclusion

The cash-strapped start-ups have to cut down on their expenses wherever possible and these set of essential tools will help you accomplish significant tasks without having to shell out huge sums on trained personnel. These set of tools range across different set of essential tasks that are crucial for the growth of a startup.

If you have any suggestion for a must-have tool for startups, feel free to share your tips in the comments section below.

Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like towrite for us?

An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.

]]>http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/31/10-essential-tools-every-startup-needs/feed/15 Tips To Make Social Media For Business Work Like A Charmhttp://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/30/5-tips-to-make-social-media-for-business-work-like-charm/
http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/30/5-tips-to-make-social-media-for-business-work-like-charm/#commentsMon, 30 Mar 2015 19:00:29 +0000http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/?p=23399Social media marketing is like opening the Pandora’s box. We could have the best team trying to crack the code with budget in mind. We knew exactly the power of social media but at the same time, we know how much they can burn a huge hole in our wallets. Not to forget, social media marketing takes up a lot of our time and efforts.

In most cases, we felt like drawing in the sea. Dozens of social media platforms with so little time, it certainly doesn’t look great for us social media managers.

The most common problem for businesses is they are using social media as the only powerhouse for leads, traffic, sales and revenue. Yes, we know the power of the Internet; a single click of the button can reach potentially millions of people.

Social media is meant to compensate what native marketing isn’t able to perform but surely not the only means to achieve the targeted goal.

So today, we will be talking about simple ways to get social media working for business, a.k.a. work for you!

Here are 5 very simple and actionable tips you can do for your social media marketing today.

#1. Straighten up your goals

Before you even:

Think of using social media

Writing down your action plans

Finding a piece of paper or turning on your notepad application

Do this – define your goal(s).

Regardless, if it is to create a brand awareness, doubling your traffic or increase social engagement, you need to have a clear and defined goal.

According to Wikipedia, a goal is a desired result that a person or a system envisions, plans and commits to achieve.

You may have a dozen goals that you want to achieve, but having lesser goals to achieve at one time is always better. Trust me.

Plus, goals ensure that you are inline with the ultimate target. There’s no denial that having multiple goals is good (for multi-tasking) but if you have limited manpower, having multiple goals isn’t the best move at all.

#2. Define which social media platforms to use

Social media can go south real fast if you don’t have a good target audience mindset….not to forget, burning holes in your wallet and failing your KPI (Key Performance Index). You can also waste ample time when focusing on the wrong platform.

With over two dozen social media platforms to choose from, go with the top 3 or top 5 (even one is awesome as well) platforms that fit your needs.

If you have no idea which platforms work better for you, practice the spaghetti strategy. Using the spaghetti strategy is really simple. All you need to do is to spend between one to two months (you could do lower but I do not recommend that) engaging in various social media platforms of your choice. After the test period, determine which gives you the best traffic, revenue and engagement.

Still need a guideline? Here are mine:

Facebook – Video and image sharing which links back to your website

Twitter – Image sharing and quotes work best

LinkedIn – King of discussion and forum methodology

Pinterest and Instagram – When images are your only asset

When it comes to choosing the best social media platform, forget about following others. It is all about focusing on yourself, your brand and business (not to forget your followers).

Discover ways to define your target market and follow by understanding their social patterns. The rest? Pretty much history!

#3. It is NOT about the numbers

I hope you are not chasing numbers but I don’t despise it either. Numbers of fans help a lot in branding and visibility but if your fans are NOT your target audience, you are literally throwing hard work right down the drain.

Don’t chase for the number of followers you can gain in the shortest time period. Instead, chase for die-hard fans who will support your brand for years to come.

Building a fan base is more powerful than anything else in the planet (besides money).

Need some success stories? Watch how Noah from AppSumo does it perfectly. Their main (and only) goal during the early startup phrase is to create a fan base – as big as possible.

Why? Not everyone would be interested in his product BUT, fans who signed up for his newsletter would definitely be interested in something he had previously offered.

Make sense?

#4. Automate if you can’t, but don’t push it over

Social media automation helps you to save a lot of time and trust me, it works like wonders. The problem starts when businesses are using it to automate everything they do on social media – and that’s really wrong!

Automation tools Buffer and Hootsuite are great to help you simplify your tasks but you would need to use them correctly. For example, Buffer is an awesome tool to schedule your posts while with Hootsuite, social listening is never easier than that!

#5. Should you be ‘shopping’ on social media?

Paid advertising – that’s what I mean. The answer is “yes” and “no”.

If you are running a business and need some serious traffic or branding, paying for social media advertising can actually multiple your reach and success opportunity the whole 9-yards.

If you are just trying to leverage social media for the sake of it, then the answer is simply no. Social media marketing isn’t cheap but it is not the worst either. Advertising on social media is really powerful and you are pretty much guaranteed to get a good return of investment (ROI) with the right strategy but it is certainly not cheap.

For example, you would need to spend at least $5 a day on Facebook ads just to reach to sufficient people to have an impact on your business. If you are looking for some actionable tips to use in 2015, here are 60 tips to make social media marketing work for you.

Over to you

What’s your take on social media? Is your company playing the long game with social media? Let’s take this further in the comments area!

Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like towrite for us?

An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.

]]>http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/30/5-tips-to-make-social-media-for-business-work-like-charm/feed/2Content Marketing: It’s All About Strategy!http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/30/content-marketing-strategy/
http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/30/content-marketing-strategy/#commentsMon, 30 Mar 2015 13:00:18 +0000http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/?p=23489How’s your website doing? Are you getting a great increase in visitors and customers? No? Well, then you have lots of company, because the majority are not. And here’s why: most businesses developed a website (or had someone develop it for them) years ago.

In the beginning, the strategies used to drive visitors to a site were pretty standard and also pretty ineffective – publish one’s site address in standard forms of advertising (print, radio, mailers, fridge magnets, etc.), print new business cards which included the web address, and hope that potential consumers would come to the site and buy.

The next “generation” of marketing was to get backlinks. This was accomplished by having a campaign of writing articles to be placed in directories and blogs to which targeted markets routinely visited. Basically, an article or post would be submitted for publication and, if accepted, there were allowed a certain number of links back to one’s site.

Then, of course, came keywords – the art of stuffing as many commonly used search terms into articles and blogs. The more the merrier! Content mattered not.

Content Rules Now

Audiences are now more sophisticated, and search engines have developed algorithms to evaluate sites, blog posts and articles. Driving people to a site is now a matter of providing rich content, education, and information all over the web, so that consumers want to read what you have written or view what you have designed.

Website content and design is important, of course, but more important are compelling blogs, webinars, and social media presences. So important has content become, in fact, that companies who can afford to employ full-time content or digital marketers to design and implement their web-based marketing programs. You may not have the money to employ such a person, but you can copy their 3 basic strategies.

#1. Provide More Value and Less Advertising

If your business niche is custom-made window treatments, then you are an expert. You have lots of valuable information to share with others – information about blinds, shades, curtains/drapes, shutters, materials and fabrics, and such. If a customer were to come into your brick and mortar store, you would probably give them lots of information and educate them about all of the options they have for window treatments. You must think of your potential online customers in the same way. They are looking for valuable information, not a “hard sell” (and Google is looking for this too). So, here is what you do:

Get a blog on your website, and start writing educational posts about window treatments.

Invite others in related businesses to post on your site, and ask to post on theirs as well. These reciprocal relationships are valuable to both parties because they open up new customer markets.

Don’t just set up a Facebook presence – engage your social media followers with your company “personality.” Be creative, humorous, and promote your brand name as you do

Focus always on the content, not on advertising. Many people use the 80-20 “rule.” 80% of what you write should be informational and educational, and 20% should focus on your brand name, sales, discounts, etc.

Unless your audience is intellectual, be conversational in tone – you are an authority but you are also just a regular person!

#2. Developing Relationships

Link “stuffing” is a thing of the past, so stop it! If someone were to visit your window treatment showroom, how would you engage them? You would spend time with them, developing a trusting relationship. The same goes for your web interaction with potential and existing customers and with other internet entrepreneurs. You want “followers” who like you and who will refer others to you by sharing your link, just as someone who physically visits your showroom will refer others to your store. As you develop these relationships, you won’t have to be the one getting links out there – others will do it for you!

On your own site blog, be certain you have a function that allows readers to comment and engage with one another; on your social media postings, be certain that followers can comment and share and engage with one another.

Again, invite business-related entrepreneurs to post on your blog and on your social media sites, and offer to post on theirs. If I owned a window treatment business, I would be looking for blogs on interior design, furniture, wall art, flooring, cabinetry, etc. and set up great reciprocal arrangements for posting. I would be visiting those blogs and social media presences and commenting often!

Above all, I would be providing value in my posts, not advertising.

#3. Link Building

What Google really wants to see is others providing links back to your site, not you simply inundating the web with your own back links. So, here is how you get that done:

Guest Posting: Find popular and highly regarded blogs within your general business category. Submit a guest post that is creative, compelling and of high interest! If it gets published, you have a whole new audience, and there is a link back to you. Remember, the content must be exceptional, easy to read and understand, and creatively written.

Use infographics – visuals are always good. Post them on social media sites and submit them to related blogs. They must be attractive and compelling. Consumers want to access information quickly, and infographics are highly appealing.

Search for sites that are related but not direct competitors. Email them and ask for a link to your business from their websites. Offer to do the same for them!

Search for sites that are providing backlinks to your direct competitors (there are apps for this). Provide that site owner/administrator with some really great samples of postings, etc. that you have produced. Ask for a link to your site in exchange for providing content on theirs.

Nothing ever remains static in the business of marketing. And you may not have the time that it takes to engage in content marketing. On the other hand, it is critical for business growth. If you lack the time or the expertise, you do not necessarily have to employ a full-time content marketer. Find someone who is really good at this and contract for their services. Content marketing is a huge business now, and there are lots of freelancers out there!

Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like towrite for us?

An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.

]]>http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/30/content-marketing-strategy/feed/1The Ultimate Inbound Marketing Guide for Businesshttp://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/30/the-ultimate-inbound-marketing-guide-for-business/
http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/30/the-ultimate-inbound-marketing-guide-for-business/#commentsMon, 30 Mar 2015 07:00:49 +0000http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/?p=23442What does the term “inbound marketing” mean to a small business? What is the difference between inbound marketing and outbound marketing strategies? Experts say all marketing tactics revolve around wanting to increase web traffic, visitors, leads, conversions, buyers, fans and customers.

Inbound marketing wants the same things as now traditional outbound marketing; the difference is not what a business wants from marketing but how it goes about wanting it. Inbound marketing is about getting permission to contribute to the “awareness” and “consideration” steps in a buyers funnels while outbound marketing is focused on interrupting (via ads, CPC, direct mail, sales calls) these same steps.

Both inbound and outbound marketing complement each other and even the inbound marketing king – Hubspot uses outbound marketing. Outbound marketing activities like lead generation and lead nurturing using sales people is becoming a forgotten art with too many companies relying solely on inbound marketing to drive the sales engine.

That said, inbound marketing has become the main driver in getting a business into buyers awareness and consideration steps when looking for a product mainly due to the non-interruption aspect of inbound marketing.

Here are eleven tips in using inbound marketing to attract people to a business; inbound marketing is more about sharing than selling, helping not hyping. The great thing about inbound marketing is that it works so well for any business regardless of size in any market. A word of caution is inbound marketing does take a bit of time to get going, however, once the results start happening they are better qualified and less expensive than harder outbound tactics.

The foundation stone of inbound marketing is “Content” and publishing quality content alone will go a long way to increase traffic and leads for a business or website. But there is more to inbound marketing than publishing content; inbound marketing also includes social selling, article sharing, social networks conversations, social media influencers, article seeding, forum participation and chat.

#1. Have a WHOLE inbound marketing plan.

Inbound marketing includes blogging, articles, whitepapers, social networks engagement, social selling, lead generation, traffic and social media conversations. Which of these tactics can be improved?

#2. Implement all inbound marketing tactics.

A business should never rely on one or two tactics even if you are getting good results from current inbound marketing tactics, implementing all tactics will drastically improve desired results.

#3. Don’t forget the “awareness phase”.

Social media using content as the lead is where people become aware of your business and they delight in the quality of the content being read. The awareness phase is where you engage customers and prospects for future purchases and opportunities, even in B2B marketing. A business needs to have blog posts that delight, social media content that engages and messaging that keep customers or clients coming back. Before you get a lead or a sale, you need to build awareness.

#4. Share the content.

Simply posting a new article or blog post and then leaving it to chance that it will be picked up by search traffic or prospects are wasted opportunities. Social media networks opens up the ability to immediately collect traffic and leads based on a new article published not to mention the long tail SEO impact. There is more to sharing content than posting to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Sharing content takes time and effort, share across all social networks, forums, groups, while seeding the article on relevant sites like Reddit, Scoop.it etc.

#5. Love your social media accounts.

Spend time attending to all your social media account, yes they are fantastic broadcast channels but also more importantly a place to build relationships. Have a constant presence and it need not take a huge chunk of time. Share content from other sources, like other articles, reply to messages, engage with conversations and give regular updates.

#6. Stay on top of changes.

Stay tuned in as Inbound marketing, social media marketing and SEO are in a constant state of change. What is the latest social platform, the coolest social network, what type of content (words, images, videos) are best of which audience? To keep inbound marketing firing on all cylinders, marketing teams have to stay on top of changes and make sure to adjust to new opportunities while refining old ones.

#7. Embrace analytics and reporting.

The numbers produced from marketing tactics are the key to what is working and what is not. Data and numbers should be checked against goals on a regular basis be it daily or weekly. Ensure all the metrics and KPI’s are in aligned to goals, actions and activities. By viewing the numbers, a business can see where it needs to make adjustments to improve results.

#8. Solicit feedback.

Chat to customers, other departments (sales), prospects and industry peers about inbound marketing. Where do they go to be made aware, what delights them, and why do they consider one over another? Also sometimes we can fail to understand how integrated inbound marketing can be with other aspects of the business, from outbound marketing campaigns to sales calls to social selling and customer retention for future purchases. How else you can use inbound to get great results?

#9. Write quality content.

Content marketing in the inbound marketing mix is the main conduit in bringing in search traffic and leads. While content will bring in a level of traffic regardless of the content quality, the bounce rate will be high and the consideration rate low. In a digital marketplace where everyone is sharing content, every blog, article or whitepaper needs to be specific, well researched, well written and above all informative. Search the web for blog ideas and to see what social influencers are reading (and interview them to get in-depth information for future social posts)

#10. Commit time and resources.

Inbound marketing takes time, if it is a real marketing strategy for your business, then investment in time and resources to make it happen is a must. Do not let other activities take priority. Every business that is successful with inbound marketing takes the time to follow through on all tactics, methodologies, strategy and implementation; otherwise inbound marketing contribution to the business is just a wish.

#11. Give to get considered.

Once awareness levels rise (traffic, reads, likes), start to give more to get into the buyers consideration phase. Offer more giveaways, free trials, deeper white papers, studies and reports. Make it easy for them to consider you, use landing pages, webinars, free samples, and contact us forms so you can move the prospect to a qualified lead

So as you have read, there is more to inbound marketing than a 500 word promotional blog and posting it on LinkedIn. Words sometimes don’t come easy, but words are powerful, funny, enlightening and engaging. If someone told you a stream of words constructed into quality content and published as articles could drive your whole business strategy, would you be interested?

Feel free to connect with myself or indeed anyone you know in inbound marketing to help get the answers you need to get going. One thing for sure, inbound marketing works as you are reading this article right now!

Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like towrite for us?

An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.

]]>http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/30/the-ultimate-inbound-marketing-guide-for-business/feed/27 Tips To Effectively Market Your Business At Trade Shows & Eventshttp://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/27/7-tips-effectively-market-business-trade-shows-events/
http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/27/7-tips-effectively-market-business-trade-shows-events/#commentsFri, 27 Mar 2015 13:00:47 +0000http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/?p=23463According to a Forrester Research report, trade shows, conferences and events continue to be the most popular marketing strategy among B2B companies in the United States. The report found that close to 14% of the annual marketing expenditure at these companies are allocated to these trade show events and conferences. Given its popularity, it is imperative for B2B marketers to maximize the potential of this channel. In this article, we will take you through seven tips that will help you realize the potential of your event marketing campaigns.

#1. Map Out Competition

Every trade show is unique in their own way – be it the competitors who are exhibiting, or the layout, or the audience that the show caters to. To have a successful campaign at a trade show, it is important to chart out your competitors at the event, along with intel on their strategy.

One way to do it is by attending other events in your industry and identifying the layout and demonstration strategy used by your competitors. This will give you an idea of things you could do in order to be more effective. For instance, if you know that your competitors offer a live demo at their booth, you could one-up them by not only offering a demo, but also providing free samples for attendees to try out.

#2. Set Up Visual Demo

Blame it on the logistics or poor budgeting, a number of businesses make the mistake of not offering a visual demo of how the product works. Let us assume your business supplies the material for hot air balloon manufacturers. You could simple carry the material with you and show it to the attendees, or actually use a prototype of the balloon that the attendees to the booth may touch and feel to understand the utility of your product.

When David Dodgen of AquaPodKit, a bathtub bladder manufacturer tried to demo his product at a hurricane preparedness event, he bought an actual bathtub to the venue to store 65 gallons of fresh water – it visually communicated the utility to the attendees and made his campaign successful.

#3. Create Attendee Categories & Follow Up Strategy

Everyone understands the importance of follow ups in trade show marketing. But the trouble is in not having the right follow up strategy for the various segments of people you meet at the event. For instance, a typical trade show event will be visited by businesses looking for partnerships, suppliers, distributors, local media houses. Besides, you would also meet other sales executives from your industry who you may want to hire. Create separate lists in your CRM for these various categories of people you meet.

Also, prepare notes to provide a context for each of the person you meet. This helps you draft a very personalized follow-up message to the person after the event.

#4. Become An Authority For The Event

Events and conferences are pretty chaotic places and attendees often waste a lot of time simply getting around. Although organizers often have their own web and mobile applications to make getting around easy, you could always make it better.

Partner with the organizers and offer to build the application for them. This helps you get better visibility through the organizers’ marketing campaigns. Even if technology is not your forte, there are services that offer white-labelled conference apps that you could use as a starting point for building these applications that the attendees to an event might need.

Alternately, build a micro-site for the event where attendees can get all the information they will need about the event. This helps you serve as the go-to company for the event which makes it all the more likely for the attendees to visit your booth while they are there.

#5. Be Prepared With Infrastructure

Everybody loves to get swamped during a trade show event. But how do you make sure you are stocked sufficiently? Be prepared with sufficient number of samples and check with your web host to ensure your website can handle any potential spike in traffic. Most importantly, chart out a logistics strategy for instances when you may run out of all demos and samples. Can you figure a way out to arrange for more at short notice?

Sometimes, the ROI from events are only limited by how many attendees you have prepared yourself to be hit with. Do not let infrastructural limitations be the reason for lost business.

#6. Rehearse, Rehearse & Rehearse

Talking to a trade show attendee is serious business. You only have five minutes to network and sell your product. Therefore, rehearsal is key to success. Prior to the event, identify the various selling strategies during the event, and rehearse these various techniques. You may also test the efficacy of the various strategies with test customers. This helps you achieve your objective – be it generating leads for your sales team, or creating awareness about your products.

#7. A/B Test Your Event Strategy

Typically, companies in the B2B space attend at least 3-4 events every year. This is a great opportunity to test and learn strategies that work and those that do not. A lot of times, marketers try radically new strategies for every event. While these strategies may help you enhance your ROI, there are not many takeaways in terms of strategy.

To address this, do not change too many aspects of your booth and sales strategy between events. By just using one or two variables at a time, it is easier to know what works and what doesn’t. For instance, if you want to test the efficacy of providing freebies to visitors, ensure not to change any other aspects of your booth – this way, you can measure the success rate of freebies. For events that last for days, you could in fact A/B test these strategies during various days to know what works.

Events and trade shows are the lifeline of B2B businesses. With proper strategy and planning in place, it is possible to maximize your ROI through these events. What other strategies do you think are helpful in improving your returns from a trade show? Tell us in the comments below.

Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like towrite for us?

An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.

]]>http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/27/7-tips-effectively-market-business-trade-shows-events/feed/1Are You Sure Your Marketing Tech-Investments Meet Business Needs?http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/27/sure-marketing-tech-investments-meet-business-needs/
http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/27/sure-marketing-tech-investments-meet-business-needs/#commentsFri, 27 Mar 2015 07:00:42 +0000http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/?p=23349Recently, we came across a system that would let us change the matter of an email once it is deployed. It had some attractive additional features, and we spent considerable time trying to determine how it could be used to our advantage. But, on further consideration, we realized that our analysis was misled. We found out that the system does not address to any requirements of the business, nor the business side was involved in the review process. And, we were more concerned about the basic technology and its working than the system’s impact on how we interact with the target audiences of our email campaign.

Joint Application Requirements (JAR)

A clear solution to such disconnects between business and technology is a Joint Application Requirements, a part of Joint Application Development. As online marketers, we put a sharp focus on producing the content that describes how our solution can solve business problems. In the pursuit to optimize interactions with consumers and prospects, we sometimes lose the track – that is what happened with us in this case.

Therefore, marketers should gather businesses’ needs first, and then evaluate and implement new technology. When the action is taken without considering the benefits of this connection to consumers and business requirements, it will create a ripple effect within your organization, and the company might lose its position and sales, and result in angry customers.

However, defining requirements is not an easy task. Establishing agreement between various stakeholders can seem strenuous, as communicating and edifying expected benefits can. JAR sessions are a great solution.

What Are JAR sessions?

JARs are systematic and facilitated meetings between the different working groups within the organization, especially held to discuss the requirements. In these sessions, participants state what they want, and a facilitator guide them towards a comprehensive solution that is greater than the participants’ individual needs.

In some sessions, the requirements might evolve over time, while in others all the requirements are stated up front. The sessions may last for several hours or days, depending upon the complexity of the matter.

Holding a JAR Session

The idea of the JAR session is more than just gathering everyone for a day to talk over all the issues. There is a set of formal techniques, which are applied to these sessions to make them as fruitful as possible.

Identifying the Right Attendants – Inviting the project sponsor, major clients, and project team members is fine, but the question is who else are required to be present? All decision makers as well as information providers must be invited at the session. If there are no capable participants who can make decisions and provide necessary information, the session is not going to be useful.

The Presence of a Facilitator – Usually, every JAR session has one experienced facilitator, who makes sure that the discussion stays on the track, the requirements are fulfilled, the rules are followed, and the meeting goes on as productive as possible. The experience and communication skills of a facilitator can significantly influence the success of the session. A facilitator does not contribute his or her opinions to the session.

Having a Scribe to Take Notes – There should be a scribe to record the proceedings, document the decisions, and note any actions in the timely manner. Like a facilitator, even a scribe does not contribute to the session, but may ask to clarify or review some points.

Spending the Required Time – The main aim of a JAR session is to go through all the aspects that need to be discussed, and reach a conclusion on what needs to be done. The participants should commit to attend the entire session, no matter how long it lasts.

Factors Considered by the Facilitator

The facilitator will start by focusing why a system is being needed and what benefits could be expected for the potential customers. Once these concerns are understood, other points should be covered as follows.

Functional Impact – What impact the new solution will have on the marketing organization and ongoing processes? What new processes will need? Will they need a new staff? What impact will it lay on other departments within the company? Has the impact been discussed and committed to?

Risks – What risks are paired with the new solution? What risks does it incur if the solution is not implemented?

ROI – What ROI is needed to achieve success? In how much time does the ROI require to be accomplished?

Ease of Use – How easy it is to use the solution? How do you want to approach the solution? What resources do you have to maintain the application?

Flexibility – How flexible and easy it is to alter the solution if it is required to?

Robustness – How many transactions you want the system to handle every day? How many transactions do you want to process concurrently? How many customers do you want to access the system?

Integration and Security – Does the new system can integrate with the existing one? What are the security measures?

Reports – What type of reports you want? How do you want to access those reports?

All such questions are addressed before jumping to conclusion. Not all the requirements that emerge from a JAR session weigh equally in the selection process. Considering all the conditions and constraints will result in the optimal selection. Thus, understanding the requirements and potential effect on the business through JAR meetings will lead to an improved competitive position, rise in sales, and utmost customer satisfaction.

Advantages of JAR Sessions

Imagine working on a system development project that involves various departments within a large company. Now, imagine you are holding a JAR session as a requirements gathering method.

JAR sessions offer several key advantages over traditional requirements gathering techniques. As they involve active end-user participation, these sessions invoke a sense of ownership and responsibility among the attendees. Clients are more likely to make a solution work because they have invested so much of themselves in the project.

A clear understanding of the project requirements helps cut down the development time and product cost. Better understanding of project goals between team members can help them communicate better and improves cooperation, no matter whether they are from the business or IT field. Furthermore, the involvement of both IT team and business executives reduce the chances of missing out any issues, and the final product can be delivered in a more efficient way.

Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like towrite for us?

An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.

My default website platform is WordPress. But is there something better. cheaper, faster?

As it turns out — Blogger is still a viable alternative platform to WordPress! I started my very first blog on Blogger back in 1998, and to be honest, hadn’t really considered them as a viable options since 2006. But as it turns out — this is certainly something you should consider

Why you should consider Blogger as a WordPress Alternative

I just came out of an amazing Christine DeGraff (@chrisdegraff) and Ronnie Bincer (@ronniebincer) Google Hangout with special guest David Kucher (@confluentforms) who talked about using Blogger (Google’s Blogger) as a WordPress alternative.

If you’re hyperventilating and want to get into the details without reading further – go right ahead and watch the hangout right here:

Why choose Blogger?

SPEED– Your blog would be hosted on the Google platform and CDN (content distribution network) and that means SPEED. Speed is great for getting found, speed keeps your audience on your site. Speed is good.

Responsiveness – Yes, there are themes and templates for Blogger too and they are responsive. With so many people using mobile devices to access sites, speed and responsiveness are critical.

FREE hosting – Yes, I said FREE hosting. Because your site would be on the Blogger platform, it would be hosted on Google and that is currently FREE.

Lean and mean – Blogger sites do NOT use a lot of resources and databases and that makes them lean, mean and fast.

Monetize with ads: Because it’s on Google, placing Google ads is fast and easy.

Check out the conversation and debate:

I was going to write more on this – but I think you should just check out the #TNTBootcamp Hangout Page where you can follow the comments.

David Kucher explained that a site doesn’t have to be simple to be developed on Blogger. He gave me this example: Concentrics Restaurants. As you can see, it’s as cool as any site you might develop on WordPress. But here is the rub. WordPress developers are all over the place, finding a great Blogger developer that can create gorgeous sites might not be as easy.

But now, you know David Kucher and if you want to know more and explore the possibility of creating your next site on Blogger – you know who to talk to.

Want to see more comparisons?

Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like towrite for us?

An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.

]]>http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/26/looking-wordpress-alternative-think-blogger/feed/35 Useful Tips for a Successful Content Marketing Strategyhttp://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/24/5-useful-tips-successful-content-marketing-strategy/
http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/24/5-useful-tips-successful-content-marketing-strategy/#commentsTue, 24 Mar 2015 13:00:58 +0000http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/?p=23236Mere content will not get you anywhere in as far as a successful content marketing campaign is concerned. Due to the intensive competition in the market, you need to create great and high quality content for you to achieve your desired objectives. The good thing is that it is indeed possible to create awesome content that can appeal to your readership.

With these five tips, you are a step closer to creating amazing content for your audience. If you master this skill and be consistent with your posts, you’ll succeed with your content marketing strategy.

#1. Understand Your Target Group

The most important thing when it comes to content marketing is being able to understand your target audience. Defining your target audience will help you know who you are really speaking to. You cannot expect one to be talking about social media jargons when addressing the 80 or the 90 year olds. And the same thing applies to the minorities; you cannot talk to young people about life insurance. As a brand, you need to be aware of your vision, mission and your products so that you can be target specific.

When it comes to defining your target audience, you need to set your age range. In addition to this, it is important to know whether your products/services are targeted for the male/female genders or will it be appropriate in terms of ethnicity. You need to understand how your target audience thinks in order to come up with an effective content marketing strategy. To help you with this, you may want to engage an individual belonging to the same demographic who thinks and reasons like the target lot so as they can assist you to create high quality content that is target specific.

#2. Come Up With The Right Message

Now that you have identified your target audience, the next step involves drafting an appropriate message that can address their needs. You need to know exactly what is it that you’ll tell them. The headline is a very important piece in your message. Make it as attractive as possible to grab the reader’s attention. You need to be spot on with your headline so that the readers can be attracted to reading the rest of your content.

There are a number of viral techniques which can be used to make your content interesting and appealing to the target audience. They include:

The use of photos – you may want to insert a photo showing the behind the scenes of your office that highlights your employees have an awesome time, for example.

An infographic – the infographic can contain business statistics together with industry statistics that can be interesting to the readers and in addition it is much easier to read than the plain text.

Funny images – that may include an inspiring message with your company logo or brand name attached.

Viral tweets – you can also use tweets that have successfully trended and garnered great engagement as your headline.

The body of the message should also be interesting in one way or the other. Ensure that your message clearly highlights some of your core values that make your customers distinguish your brand from the rest of the competition. Take care not to make it more of an advertisement but a statement that clearly shows them your unique qualities. Remind them of what you are really made of so that the next time they are shopping, it is your brand name that pops up first.

#3. Ensure Your Message Is Specific To Individual Social Networks

The next step involves the optimization of your message. You will need assistance from the different social media channels to create awareness and attract readership, so you need to optimize your message to each social media network. If say, for example, you have created a stellar message that is causing a lot of buzz on Twitter and Facebook, you may want to expand on the same without a gap of your content.

To go even a step further, consider expanding smaller messages on Twitter or Facebook by creating related videos and uploading them on YouTube and Instagram. Videos have been identified to be the highest form of content and can generate a lot of traffic if used correctly. They are not the easiest to create but can greatly help you to pass your message across. When creating your video, ensure that it is clear and is of the highest quality so that the message can be clearly received.

The importance of optimizing your content cannot be overemphasised. Research has shown that attaching an image on a Facebook or Twitter post increases the chances of engagement. If you are using Facebook it important to note that you do not need to request for likes or comments because the platform has an algorithm that identifies posts with such wordings and limits their reach.

#4. An A/B Test Is Always Encouraging

A/B test will go a long way in helping you know exactly what message your target audience are more inclined to. It can be defined as the process of formatting the same message in two different ways. Format your message as type A and type B.

Once you have successfully optimized your message for each social media channel and gone ahead to format the message in to both type A and B, you can now go ahead and try them out. When doing your type A/B testing, it is very important to consider your audience and the time variables. Post them at an appropriate time so that you can give social media a chance to grow.

As the test is still going on, ask yourself questions related to which headline acquired the most engagement, the language that worked best, the structures that garnered the most engagement and the sharing of the post across the time zones.

#5. Curating Needs To Be Considered

Curating content is not very involving and requires an individual to locate, read and qualify digital material which is deemed as relevant to your audience. In a matter of 30 minutes, you should be able to have completed this. Curating is a lot more different from content aggregation which derives content directly from other RSS feeds and shares them automatically.

The best part about sharing third party information is that your audience will look at you as a reliable source of relevant information and it will also build relationships with other players in the industry.

Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like towrite for us?

An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.

]]>http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/24/5-useful-tips-successful-content-marketing-strategy/feed/16 Small Business Marketing Strategies You May Not Have Thought Ofhttp://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/24/6-small-business-marketing-strategies-may-not-thought/
http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/24/6-small-business-marketing-strategies-may-not-thought/#commentsTue, 24 Mar 2015 07:00:41 +0000http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/?p=23359When your business is just starting out, you probably don’t have a huge budget to spend on advertising, and word of mouth doesn’t spring up by itself. Having a clear, accessible website and a strong social media presence should already be commonplace, but these can’t stand as marketing on their own (and we hope we don’t need to tell you what to post on social media).

Therefore, you’ll need to get creative if you’re going to make your mark.

Check out these six tips for marketing your small business on a budget. Many of them are surprisingly easy, and when executed right, can do wonders for your startup.

#1. Brand Blogging

Starting a brand blog might seem pretty standard by now, but it’s the way in which you use your blog that counts. Rather than simply seeing it as a view to promote company announcements, create interesting content that will be useful to your target customers.

Top 10 lists; top tips and how-to guides will all go a long way to serving your audience and forging a bond of trust from the onset. You can find what people in your niche want to know by using Google Adwords to see the search volume for certain keywords and topics (no paid account required).

You can also deliver posts that are topical or seasonal and unrelated to your field (as well as the more relevant stuff) to become integrated into your audience’s daily lives and start to build a warm community. Be funny; be silly; be sage; be entertaining. People will buy from you by the way you make them feel – not by you telling them your products are worth buying.

Blogging is one of the easiest ways to introduce members of your team; promote transparency, and make your brand more human.

#2. Instructional Videos

If images are worth 1000 words, video is…

Well, we’ll let you finish that sentence.

It doesn’t take a lot of fancy equipment to create a video people will want to share and link to. As long as you use a good quality camera (that provides high resolution footage), a well-lit environment and maybe a tripod, you can create a good tutorial, commentary or demonstration that will be genuinely useful to your potential consumers. And if it’s not perfect, don’t worry, as people are starting to relish a more DIY style.

You may decide to keep the camera static or take your viewers on an explorative, hand held journey within your office space. Online tutorials (using software or programs) are even simpler to put together, as all you’ll need are some pc recording software and a good mic.

Nowadays, you may not even need a camera. This post from Wisteria shows you how to film a high quality brand video using an iPhone.

#3. Mock Content

Fewer things get your audience’s attention like a hilarious, satirical and/or parody-esque piece of content. This approach has worked for the likes of DollarShaveClub, whose parody online ad saw it go from zero to hero, and Old Spice, whose hilarious ads and websites selling fake products made it a household name.

Some major brands have even used mock ads to make fun of their competitors, such as IKEA (whose Singapore advert mimicked the style of Apple to sell its new catalogue) and T-Mobile (which mocked its rival Boost Mobile’s ad, featuring famous rappers, by inventing ‘Poser Mobile’ to sell its own PAYG phone plan).

The best part is that mock content often looks better if it’s DIY, as this tends to add to the humour factor. If you choose to go the competitor route, remember you don’t need to be negative about the other brand. As long as you can explain what your company does differently, consumers may be swayed to give your company a shot over a familiar favourite.

#4. Freelancers

You won’t be able to do everything alone – some things might take a little more skill. Luckily, services like Craigslist and Fiverr enable you to get quick, specialist jobs done for a pretty cheap fee.

Fiverr, for example, has a whole host of writers, bloggers, photographers, designers and animators, all willing to offer their services for no more than five bucks. However, use Fiverr wisely – paying for likes on Facebook or a mention on an obscure blog is not going to do much for your outreach. Read this post for the pros and cons of using Fiverr and how you can make it work for you.

Craigslist and oDesk are great places to find freelancers willing to do odd jobs as well as students looking to broaden their portfolios. Take a chance on somebody and it might benefit both of you.

#5. Social Bookmarks

Social bookmarks are a useful way to share your content around, with Reddit and Stumbleupon probably being the most effective. Both can be described as immediate ‘windows’ into what is going on on the internet, with topics broken down by niches (very specific ones in Reddit’s case) and promoted/demoted depending on how popular they are with readers.

Before posting links on Reddit, you’ll want to read and abide by the appropriate ‘Reddiquette’, which means sharing only awesome content, not being too self-promotional, and responding to others’ posts.

Stumbleupon is also free, but you can opt to go for Stumbleupon advertising, which at a base rate of 10 cents per click, is much cheaper than any social media advertising plan. Each additional filter to add to your ad costs just 2 cents. The more specified and unique you make your niche, the more exposure and traction you’re likely to get.

#6. Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing may take a little more time and planning than an online campaign, but the effects can be monumental for any fledgling brand. Guerrilla marketing is cheap and relatively easy to implement; all you’ll need is a bit of creativity and the drive to think outside of the box. They can also be immensely fun to pull off, and any interaction with the public you have can double up as market research.

Your campaign will need to be well thought out and extensively planned, to avoid any setbacks happening on the day. It’s also preferable to make sure you won’t be breaking any local rules or laws (unless of course, that’s the kind of reputation you’re going for…).

You can find some useful tips on carrying out guerrilla marketing, along with some prime examples here.

Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like towrite for us?

An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.

]]>http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/24/6-small-business-marketing-strategies-may-not-thought/feed/1Micro Conversions: An eCommerce Technique to Boost Conversion Ratehttp://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/23/micro-conversions-ecommerce-technique-boost-conversion-rate/
http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/03/23/micro-conversions-ecommerce-technique-boost-conversion-rate/#commentsMon, 23 Mar 2015 07:00:25 +0000http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/?p=23344It is good to focus on the larger picture in your eCommerce business. However, neglecting a few small things can highly destroy all your efforts. As you always focus on macro conversions, have you ever thought of looking at the micro sides? Micro conversion is an important part of the pre-macro converting process.

Micro Conversion – Your Smart Website Conversion Technique

Checking the progress at the initial stage of business always yields better results. And micro conversion helps you to measure such progress and accomplish your other goals. They are complete conversions of secondary actions that are important to your visitors and are indicators of potential intent or intent to purchase. Each steps of micro conversion brings your visitors close to the final purchase.

Why to Focus on Micro Conversions?

If 50% of them did not buy, then what were they doing? Was their visit to your site a complete waste of time? So you need to understand and track what were they doing in your site. These are secondary conversions that help your business to know whether they were known customers or potential customers.

Once you learn about these practices, it becomes easier for you to prepare your strategy and approach the customers at the initial stage to confirm conversion.

The Different Stages of Buying Cycle

When people come to your website they’re at different stages of buying decision process. The typical stages of buying cycle includes

Research and accumulation of information

Analysis

Identification of problems

Purchase

Post purchase.

At this stage, especially when they encounter any problem, try to understand and find out different ways to solve their problems. Most importantly, analyze and evaluate solutions and compare them. The majority of them will be looking for benefits and values. So ensure that it is easy for them to compare and highlight the benefits and values.

On Page Distractions

Distractions can come in all shapes and sizes. The common distractions that customers usually encounter involves

Too many call-to-action buttons

Too many links, videos, offers

Excessive information

Background noise

Complicated navigation.

Here you need to strictly stick to the philosophy ‘less is more’. Less distraction, less links, and less choices equals higher conversion rates, more leads and more money. However, you need to measure how much less is optimal for increasing your conversion rate.

Off Page Distractions

Not only do you have to focus on on-page distractions but also manage off-page distractions. These may come from various sources like dog barking at home, managing a cranky baby, or sudden arrival of guests. People can encounter endless distractions just at the moment when they’re about to convert. So it is important to take these factors into consideration and come up with solutions.

Try to identify their issues and use email to follow up with them. You must also use Social Medias to reach them and help the lead convert into sales.

It has been observed that 84% of 25 to 34 years olds have clicked on a site but got distracted due to irrelevant or intrusive ads. People often go offline to make their decisions. So you’d better be careful about how you design and display on site to deliver a great user experience.

Track the Downloaded Files

If you offer software demo for download, white papers in PDF file, the files which actually gets downloaded are micro-conversions that needs to be measured. This can be done either through event-tracking or virtual pageviews. Tracking these downloads are important as they indicate the interests from the potential future customers.

Observing Items Added to Cart/Wish List

Even if a visitor does not complete a transaction, adding items to a cart or wish list is a positive indication of the interest of the potential customers in buying products from your site. The rule of thumb is to calculate the percentages of those who use wish lists and come back to complete the transaction. Some visitors also create a new account to utilize wish list or cart which again indicates that they’re most likely to come back and purchase.

Tools to Track

Google Analytics helps to visualize the path users’ travel from one page to another of the website. You can determine the content that can keep the visitors engaged with your site. The tool also enables easy examination of the purchase path and investigation of the purchase process steps that produces maximum cart abandonment rate.

Similarly, Heat Click Map tracks the visitors’ behaviour while on a page. It shows where they’re clicking and where they aren’t, highlighting the areas of improvements and opportunities.

Any sign pointed by a customer should not be counted against your total goal conversion rate. Micro conversion is not a technique to replace macro conversion but a process to enrich visitor experience and provide supplemental support for decision-making.

Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like towrite for us?

An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.